Keep Fighting | Teen Ink

Keep Fighting

January 30, 2009
By Jennifer Long BRONZE, Cave Creek, Arizona
Jennifer Long BRONZE, Cave Creek, Arizona
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Ever since I made the 7th grade volleyball team, playing volleyball has been a past time for me. So of course when I tried out for club volleyball and made the top 13's team I was ecstatic. I was one of the 1st people picked for the team. What a fun year this was going to be, right? Wrong. At the 1st practice I met the coach. She was gone the day of tryouts so the assistant coach picked the team. At 1st impression, she seemed nice. Long brown hair, soft brown eyes, soothing voice, and a incredible volleyball player, but I would soon find out she wasn't as nice as her turnout.
After a rigorous month of practicing, our very 1st tournament was finally here. Everyone on the team was excited to see how the team did, and so was I, at least until the 1st game. Turns out, the coach had something against me. She never played me. It got so bad, that one game she handed me her clipboard and told me to sit down because I wasn't going to be playing anytime soon. When she did her after game talks, she would ask everyone what they did best and worst, except me. It wasn't like I had an answer anyway. It is hard to answer something like that that doesn't apply to you.

It progressed like that for most of the year. Even when we would scrimmage in practice she wouldn't play me. I felt horrible and I was ready to give up on volleyball. I figured since my role model of a coach wouldn't play me, I wasn't good enough to play after all. It didn't help when one day she even told the team I was the worst player. Then, for one tournament she was gone.

The assistant coach coached our tournament and guess what? I played! Not much yes, but I played. He put me in for a girl that wasn't doing so well. I made my mistakes, but I scored 10 points for our team. Now, that might be much, but I didn't care. I had a chance to play. That day I realized that it didn't matter if one person didn't like me. That as long as I kept fighting, everything would turn out all right. I finally decided that if the coach didn't like me, that was her fault.


Turns out, everything did turn out. I ended up switching to one of the lower teams and I was the best player on the team. I got enough playing time to make up for the games I didn't play with my old team. I got a lot better. Even my old coach commented that I had gotten so much better. She even said she was sorry for not giving me a chance. All because I kept on fighting'



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